When and under which conditions is journalism in the “public interest?”

If one does not complacently assume whatever journalists publish is serving the common good, one gets into trouble finding a plausible answer to this question, or even an answer on which consensus may be reached. Stephen Whittle and Glenda Cooper from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University set out to provide clarification on the subject with their study, “Privacy, Probity and the Public Interest,” which asks when peeking through a keyhole or whipping out a camera phone is justified in the conflict between private sphere and public service.

White and Cooper may not deliver breathtaking new insights, yet their research, which focuses on a selection of widely-discussed cases of media coverage in the U.K., gets close to the point. Read the rest of this entry »